Congress goes back into denial

From today’s editorials: Democrats need to keep pressing for sensible climate change legislation, and responsible Republicans need to join them. And the GOP must not engage in Inquisition-style hearings.

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Opponents of tough, sensible policies to wean this nation off foreign oil and an ever-diminishing supply of cheap, polluting fossil fuels scored a big victory in Tuesday’s election.

The resurgence of Republicans in Congress leaves climate change deniers — from the sincere to the simply well-paid — in a stronger position to do yet more damage to this planet and the future of humanity. The stakes are nothing less than that, as the vast majority of scientists and most other nations have already concluded.

Just listen to Republican strategist Karl Rove crow to drilling interests at a shale gas conference in Pittsburgh the day after the election. “Climate is gone,” said Mr. Rove. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

The worry would be over things like federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, a gas drilling process whose safety is under review by the Environmental Protection Agency and New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Drillers want to use it to tap the vast Marcellus Shale formation beneath New York and five other states.

Nor does the fossil fuel industry need to worry, it would seem, about legislation like a cap-and-trade system that would encourage cleaner power plants and raise money to help develop greener energy technology, an area in which the United States should reign supreme but is instead yielding the market to nations like China.

One has only to look at the numbers to see why Mr. Rove can speak so confidently. Since 1990, the oil and gas industry has donated $238.7 million to candidates and parties, according to the non-partisan, non-profit Center for Responsive Politics. Three quarters of that money went to Republicans.

In this election cycle alone, Republicans raked in $14.3 million, Democrats just $5 million. Additionally, the oil and gas industry spent almost $112 million this year on lobbying. Electrical utilities spent another $151 million, mining interests about $21 million.

Those investments stand to pay off. Among the leading contenders for chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is Fred Upton, R-Mich., who has promised to investigate “poisonous” “job-killing” environmental regulations and dismantle a House climate panel. He’s considered, apparently, the moderate alternative to the ranking energy committee member, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas. He’s the man who apologized to BP for the White House’s investigation of the Gulf oil spill, and who once opined that climate change is entirely natural, and that humans are used to adapting to the weather.

According to The Atlantic magazine, the GOP plans high profile hearings on the alleged “scientific fraud” behind global warming. No doubt, scientists will be told to recant their heresy.

Democrats, and saner voices on the Republican side, must stand firm in opposing such tactics that would only turn Congress into a modern-day inquisition, and the laughingstock of the world. And they must keep pressing to put this nation on an energy course that’s right for both the present and the future.

3 Responses

How many climate scientists did it take to change a light bulb? NONE. But they did have consensus that it would change.
Why wasn’t Climate Change ever regarded as the number one issue of prime importance to everyone since we were told climate change was to have been immanent death for the planet, as in SAVE THE PLANET?
Why did we enjoy condemning our kids to their graves with CO2 death warrants and CO2 death threats? This is liberal love?
Was it necessary to threaten my kids with death by CO2 just to get them to turn the lights out more often?
Why were there thousands of more “consensus” scientists than protesters?
Why did CO2 levels rise despite our contributing less with the world economic downturn?
Wouldn’t the plants have shown effects long before the climate would shown effects?
Why did the leftwing hope for the CO2 misery to really have happened and the rightwing discounted it as corrupt exaggerated and politicized science?
Why were scientists not called what they were, fallible and mortal human beings and lab coat consultants?
Didn’t scientists pollute the world in the first place with their chemicals?
Why didn’t the countless thousands of consensus scientists march in the streets if this was certain death we were facing?
Since Climate Change denied ancient climate, did the doomers therefore deny evolution too? Who’s the knuckle dragging neocon now?
Why didn’t the people know that the UN’s scientific warning, predicted the effects of CO2 were to have been anything from “nothing at all” to “unstoppable warming” (death)?
Will history view climate scientists as being to science what witch burners and The Crusades and abusive priests were to religion?
History has already shown that Climate Change was to the Democrats what the Iraq War was to the neocons, lies, and fear and politics.

Good post, Jay, and thanks from a scientist. Its going to be a rough road ahead whether people are on board or not. But, at least the information is slowly getting out to the public through pieces like yours.

The secret to getting ANY climate change legislation to pass is to NOT raise costs to the consumers. We can’t afford it. I don’t mean tax rebates, either. Don’t make gas $8/gallon during the year (to control our useage) and then refund it back to us. We can’t afford it on a weekly basis as we are already living paycheck to paycheck. If you can’t make it cheaper or at least the exact same cost as what we currently have, we CANNOT manage it. However, if you could make it so that there were no extra costs, people would definitely accept it.
Like it or not, that is the truth.